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Liverpool docks are providing the inspiration for a new type of green home.

Liverpool docks are providing the inspiration for a new type of green home. Jade Wright reports

WHEN Professor Robert Kronenburg was challenged to find a way to solve the world shortage of affordable housing, he knew just the thing.

The head of the school of architecture at Liverpool University drew his inspiration from the docks he grew up by in Dingle.

“We were approached by programme makers from National Geographic to find a way to try to solve the shortage of housing,” explains Robert, a world expert in portable and flexible architecture. “And we looked straight to the docks.

“Liverpool has a huge surplus of cargo containers. They come in from the Far East, but because we don’t export as much as we import we can’t reuse most of them. They’re made of steel and are great structures, but no-one really knows what to do with them.”

So Robert and a team of six students from the department of architecture at the university set about building a prototype eco home out of the disused containers, with the help of new programme Planet Mechanics, to be shown on Sunday.

Presented by ex-army officer turned eco-warrior Dick Strawbridge – of BBC’s Not Easy Being Green fame – and eco-engineer Jem Stansfield, it aims to see ecological experts tackling a range of challenges.

Along the way they’ve met farmers, restaurant owners and even a former Olympic sailor in a bid to find ways to lower energy consumption with the environmentally-friendly technology of the future.

The team had just seven days to construct a habitable living space and headed to the docks to get hold of some old cargo containers to transform into a green des res.

There is such a surplus of these crates, according to Dick: “There are enough shipping containers in existence to circle the Earth more than twice if laid end-to-end.”

Along the way they also had to find green ways to power the building – using a wood burning stove and thermal store and solar panels to power ultra-efficient LED lights.

They even put in a computer, powered by an old gym exercise bike.

“It was an interesting challenge – hard work but a lot of fun,” says Robert. “The construction was quite difficult. There have been attempts to do this before, but it’s a hard thing to do. We needed to find a new way of tackling the problem.”

For the Liverpool University students involved, it was an unusual challenge.

“It was great for them to get hands-on experience of how a project like this could work,” explains Robert.

“Students of architecture rarely get down to the nitty gritty of building things. The practical stage normally only happens when they start work, or when they are on placements, so it’s a great for them to get involved in something like this.

“It was a steep learning curve for them – for all of us really. There was lots of discussion and debate, and Dick and Jem were great. They’re not architects, but they had plenty of ideas.”

Once the structure was finished, two students were given the unenviable task of living in it for 10 days to see just how habitable it really was.

But despite all the architectural prowess that went into building it, it still looked rather, how can I say, basic?

“It’s a prototype to see if this idea could work,” laughs Robert. “It’s not designed for its appearance.

“And the students couldn’t stay living in it forever, sadly. We couldn’t keep it indefinitely, so when the project was dismantled we gave all the bits away to be reused or recycled.

“Obviously there was a small element of wastage, there always will be, but everything that could be reused or recycled was. That was our aim from the beginning.

“Most of the furniture ended up in the students’ houses,” he laughs. “Our students are very resourceful.”

And are you looking forward to seeing the results on TV?

“We’re all a bit nervous,” says Robert. “I have no idea how we’re going to come across. But it should be interesting viewing.”

The Liverpool episode of Planet Mechanics – Heavy Metal House – will be screened on the National Geographic channel on Sunday at 7pm.

The Faculty of Architecture will open its doors for its end-of-year show of students’ work on June 6.

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